Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In defence of my colleagues, it is difficult to pose a question because the presentation was so comprehensive. I was interested to hear what Mr. Murray said about Indonesia because I was there last year. He is so right. It is a country with a huge population which is growing at a phenomenal rate and with an emerging middle class. It is absolutely ripe for trade with Ireland as an export destination.

The need for an Irish embassy there was brought home to me. I was visiting with six other European parliamentarians. We were invited to a dinner and each of their ambassadors was also invited. There were five or six ambassadors but no Irish person apart from myself. It is a lost opportunity when we do not have an embassy.

We hear about air connections but it is hard enough to get one to America. The critical mass to get a non-stop connection to Beijing is never going to happen. We do not even have a runway that would take such a plane to fly direct to Beijing. In fairness to the last government - to which I never give any credit - it did try to pursue the Middle East contact as a means to fly on to the Far East. We should be working on that rather than talking about planes going directly from Beijing to Dublin, which is not going to happen.

It was interesting to hear what Mr. Murray said about the visa issue. We have talked endlessly about visas to China, as well as how difficult they are to obtain and how expensive they are. There was quite an innovative pilot programme for the London Olympics last year whereby if one was coming to the games one could come to Ireland as well on the same visa. It was being tried out as something that we could carry forward, rather than having to get a British visa. The Chinese are not only going to come to Ireland, they will also come to Britain, so we could be an add-on.

Was Mr. Murray saying it is so difficult to get a British visa that we would be better off linking with the French visas? Is that what he is suggesting?